Top Searches:

Stubble burning: Doubts in air over machinery subsidy

TNN | Feb 2, 2018, 01:20 IST

NEW DELHI: The Union Budget on Thursday announced a special scheme to subsidise machinery required by farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to deal with crop residue in the belief that this would help curb stubble burning, a factor in pollution in the National Capital Region. But agriculture and environmental experts, besides the farmers, believe that the measure does not deal with the root of the crop residue problem.
There is no scientific estimate of how much stubble burning contributes to air pollution, but paddy stubble burning has been linked to a major spike in PM 2.5 levels in NCR in October-November and wheat stubble burning to another spike around April.

The allocation for sub-mission on agriculture mechanisation was increased from Rs 525 crore in 2017-18 to Rs 1,140.29 crore, possibly to fund the machinery scheme. Under this scheme, financial assistance is provided to farm machinery testing institutes, which also impart training to farmers, technicians and nominees of state governments and agro industries and engineering entrepreneurs.

The Budget was silent on other sources of air pollution such as industries and thermal power plants and there was no allocation for or a mention of the National Clean Air Programme announced last year. The allocation for the Central Pollution Control Board, responsible for enforcing and monitoring air and water pollution, was Rs 100 crore.

Agricultural experts said crop stubble burning was not a problem of machinery alone. “The fact is it does not make economic sense for farmers to use labour or machinery to remove crop stubble,” said Ramanjaneyulu GV, executive director, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture. “I expected the government to focus on incentivising proper disposal of crop stubble by not burning it. It’s also not clear what will be subsidised — rotavators or happy seeders.”

Ramanjaneyulu said that instead of viewing it as only a machinery problem, the government could have considered village-level composting centres. Having studied the crop stubble problem in north India, he also pointed out that there was no assistance to farmers to diversify their crop from paddy and wheat. In Andhra Pradesh, for one, before paddy is harvested, pulses are sown and the paddy stubble disintegrates naturally over time. Corroborating such a view, Umendra Dutt, farmer-leader of Punjab-based Kheti Virasat Mission, said its organic farmers never had to burn stubble nor use machinery to get rid of the crop remains stubble because their crops were diversified.

Dharmendra Kumar of the Bharatiya Kisan Union felt that a “minimum support price for fruits, vegetables and others produce can go a long way in breaking the wheat-paddy cycle.”

Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director at Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said the scheme could help in dealing with episodic pollution, but “overall the Budget treated air pollution as a local problem of Delhi-NCR, ignoring the national scale of air pollution.”

All Comments ()+^ Back to Top

Characters Remaining: 3000

Continue without login

or

Login from existing account

FacebookGoogleEmail

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive. Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.